U.N. Receives 40 Pounds of Cocaine in Mail

The workers in the mail room at the United Nations spend their days sorting through the mounds of mail and packages that arrive each morning. However, on January 16^th, two bags caught the attention of the mail room employees.

Diplomatic pouches for the United Nations are white canvas bags, but they also have a dark blue stripe and the words “diplomatic mail” and “United Nations” on them. It’s a means of identifying the bags. These particular bags did not have either the words or the stripes on them. Instead, there were only U.N. seals on the bags.

Security was called and they opened the bags. Inside, there was forty pounds of cocaine. Of course, there was no return address to show who sent them. There was also address for the intended recipient of the bags. It’s believed that the mail shippers simply saw the U.N. seal and thought it was supposed to go to the United Nations headquarters.

A spokesman for the United Nations’ Secretary-General, Martin Nesirky, said that it was definitely not a diplomatic pouch. Later in the day, a statement was issued that said that no one at the U.N. was the intended recipient of the bags.

The cocaine was packaged in 14 textbooks with hard covers. The textbooks were hollow and inside each one was a 2 ½ pound brick of cocaine. The bricks were wrapped in plastic and aluminum foil. The street value of the cocaine was estimated to be just shy of a half a million dollars.

The shipment originated in Mexico and they were dropped off at a DHL pickup site. There were no instructions for delivery. The packages were shipped to DHL’s hub in Cincinnati. From there, they were sent on their way to the United Nations headquarters.

According to one New York City police official, there is probably someone in Mexico who has a really big problem right about now.

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